Sept 10 Burruss CTC, Forsyth, GA

Another early morning road trip. We started again before dawn. It was a little closer...just under 3 hours. The one thing I like about these trips so far is we stop at fast food joints for breakfast on the way and it's FREE. Mmmm...Chick-fil-A chicken biscuit! Or should I say biscuits! For those of you that really know me...I can hear you laughing now.  This was a very unique visit for the Saints. It was the first time the guys were allowed to bring their wives. Barb couldn't go but we had about 8 that did. They were told to wear long sleeve shirts and pants. No jewelry or perfume. Very conservative. I thought I was back in the Middle East on a deployment again. Of course security took longer this time with the extra people but it wasn't to bad. This field had a basketball court about 280ft in straight away CF, a super short porch in RF about 220ft and LF just kept going with a hill about 300+ft. It was so funny to see the guys playing LF when we hit. All you could see was half there bodies because they were playing down the hill. They knew we could launch the ball. I figured I could hit a HR but was told later that you had to clear the fence and 2nd light pole down the line for it to be a HR. Everything else was a single. I felt like I was 10yrs old again playing wiffle ball making up the rules as we went along.   Needless to say I got BIG eyes going for the fence and kept flying out...typical.  This facility housed offenders sentenced as adults between 13-17 years of age and At Risk Youth offenders between 17-21 years of age but also had some old lifers as well. The first game we played the older guys and won and after that they let the youngsters play. Something really cool that happened playing the kids was this one kid who you could tell never picked a bat up in his life swung and missed the first 3 pitches. All the inmates told him to stand up there until he made contact. No lie, he must have missed 30+ balls in a row but everyone from the inmates to the wives to us were cheering for him every time. Finally we let him get to first. After the games we got to have a picnic with the inmates and ate some hot dogs, chips and cokes. FREE again...SWEET! We were able to spread out and sit with them and just talk in a personal atmosphere.  As I talked to these kids I was thinking Collett is going to be 15 yrs old and could be in a place like this. Makes you think how really grateful we are to have the children we do. I couldn't imagine having a son or daughter in a place like that before they could even drive. I believe when it was all said and done we had another 30 or so men give their lives to Christ. Only about a 10 day hour day that day. Our last mission will be our Crusade the 6-10th of October traveling throughout GA and parts of FL.

Until next time, I'll be carrying my cross....are you ready to do the same?
C4

http://www.dcor.state.ga.us/GDC/FacilityMap/html/burrus_corr_trn_cntr.html